Regarding Limited Release/Rare Beer Events

Thanks for the reply but I'm still confused, why did you need to wait in line 4.5 hours if you could just walk around until your number was close? or do you just mean wait in the building?

 

Waiting in the building is a better way to put it.

 

okay, just clarifying as I've never been to a crazy release party. Thanks.

 

I think Reserve Society/membership type situations are a good idea for more breweries to consider. It takes care of the local customer and requires a significant financial commitment, (which in theory will cut out some of the frenzy) as a result you can have much easier access to the limited release stuff. I would love for Goose Island to do this with Bourbon County stuff. Of course its not a perfect system because I am sure attaining the membership would be difficult, but it would at least cut out a lot of driving around and calling stores.

 

Step one: find a great beer bar or brewery thats more interested in taking care of customers than in generating hype. (they are rare but they still exist, I promise.)
Step two: spend more time there than is either reasonable or healthy.
Step three: count your lucky stars when an occosional and delicious pour of Pliny the Younger or Black Tuesday or some other such trophy gets put in front of your greedy little face, all without having to buy lottery tickets or wait in line, or even elbow yourself into the a seat at the bar.

The fact is that if you make yourself a part of the community then all of these rare releases, whales, trophies etc... will eventually come your way in one form or another. That's what beer does. It's social and people love to share. It doesnt mean that youre going to get first crack at them, or be able to hoard cases and cases. But you will get to enjoy basically everything out there eventually. AND you will never have to stand in line, holding a raffle ticket, seething at the other 200+ people who are spending a lot of time, money, and energy doing their best to strip everything fun from beer!!!!

 

Craft beer will eat itself.

This isn't a new dilemma, it's just bigger now.

 

I was going to start a topic similar to this, but the OP beat me to something that I think we're all starting to realize.

Craft beer is getting more and more popular than it can handle.

Looking over the 4 Elf thread, I couldn't help but chuckle and think of the KBS thread earlier in the year, and with the Michigan Winter Beer Fest. Each event had its share of butt hurt people that couldn't get what they felt they were entitled to, and while entitlement is a douche quality that even I myself am guilty of, you can't exactly blame people when looking back through history. In its infancy, you could get pretty much any craft beer you wanted in your area, go to any event that was happening, and even wait a couple weeks or so before picking up a ticket to an event after it goes on sale. Nowadays, if you're not on your computer within a couple hours of when tickets go on sale, or if you don't have the day off of work when BCS/CBS/über whale hits, you can forget about any chance of getting in on the action. While that's very encouraging for those of us who have been promoting and championing craft beer vs macro garbage, for those of us who remember what it was like to walk into a bar/event/shop and get that special beer at your leisure, it fucking sucks. And hence the bitching commences.

So I guess the question is, does craft beer suffer from a problem of being more popular than it can handle at the moment, or do we as craft drinkers need to reevaluate our expectations and temper ourselves accordingly? Either way, I don't think the problem will resolve itself in the next few years, or maybe even ever.

Regardless, I'm super looking forward to the KBS 2013 thread of people pitching a fit despite Founders tripling their output for that release while I'm comfortably sitting in the pub the day of enjoying it on tap.

 

I dont think ticketing helps. In fact it is even easier to game. If you go brown paper tickets you just get a bunch of people to buy tickets for you and then go and grab a ton of stuff. If you have to show id when you pick it up, it is still easier for people to get mules for them than to get a mule to camp in line for hours. Got no good solution but tickets are no panacea. Timing wise most of these events are held on Saturday so working folks can still go.

 

^ this.

While I know people do often feel a sense of entitlement, everyone needs to go to releases with no expectations - other than trying to have a good time and enjoy the day. When you expect to get bottles or expect to not wait in line all day, you get angry and frustrated when these things happen. You know you're going to have a long wait and you knew it when you got there, saw the crazy line, and decided to stay. That sense of entitlement has the potential to turn in to some real ridiculous bullshit... up to and including flaming the brewery and other attendees on the internet, trying to line jump past people that were at the event WAY earlier, standing at the front of the line like a beggar with a change cup asking people if they are buying their full allotment, getting super hammered and starting shit with other attendees and event staff/volunteers.

I saw all of these things happen yesterday at Dark Horse.

 

It's a very simple economic situation. Demand exceeds supply, and breweries are intentionally pricing their products below equilibrium price. So one of two things happen. 1) there's inefficiencies in the marketplace that are a royal PITA such as long lines, long lines and then not getting what you want, having to show up hours before a tapping and probably be tipsy with palate fatigue by the time the new keg is tapped, etc. 2) Prices can go up to the equilibrium price and then there will be a lot less of #1.

It seems that beer is still the common man's drink and most people's wages are far below the point where they would easily prefer #2 over #1. They'd rather suffer in line for several hours than work the equivalent number of hours at their job for the higher amount that the bottle should sell for.

So while many of us complain about the problem, let's all realize that most beer drinkers probably prefer this sucky problem over the viable alternative which is often done in many or most other industries.

 

It's kind of disheartening to see this thread languish while some other less constructive threads thrive considering how many of us gripe about and/or thoroughly enjoy release events.

 

I think the problem is that there isn't a good, easy answer.

The 'beer community' isn't a small, like minded group of individuals anymore. BA isn't the touchstone that it was ten years ago, when you could go to a festival or release and meet up with a number of real people from here. The individuals here aren't (usually) part of the problem, so in a sense trying to come up with a solution in here is preaching to the choir.

In a sense, the craft beer got what it wanted with all this. Craft is being taken seriously, and attracting the attention of those outside the fringe we used to reside in. The problem is, we wanted all those people being attracted to great beer to be happy buying up SNPA or Stone IPA...but not to be clogging up our releases of Pliny the Younger and Dark Lord. For reference, see: "Having your cake, and eating it too", or Pandora's Box. Breweries aren't to blame for this - most of those that catch heat for events are churning out rare beers alongside their everyday excellent beers, while at the same time working at that 'innovation' that the so-called community will lash out at them if they don't showcase. We want Pliny and Heddy Topper on the shelves, and yet want a release event for -bal specials that only we and a 5 other people are invited to.

There will at some point be an easing of this, I think, simply because people will realize standing in 8 hour lines for 4oz pours isn't worth it to them. Craft beer is VERY trendy right now, and at some point these trend-followers will move on to the next thing. Smaller breweries will start to collapse once this happens, which will cut back on some of the stupidly-priced releases from unproven breweries (or breweries with spotty records that still charge exorbitant prices for -bal releases while unable to make a solid pale ale) . Everyone seems to agree that there will be a shake-out some time soon; in my opinion, it'll be when the hipsters/trend-chasers move on to the next thing. Once that starts to happen, I think (hope) we'll start to see a swing back to some measure of sanity in the rare release market.

Until then, were pretty much stuck dealing with this. Like I said before, the craft community WANTED this. Now we have it. Something about 20/20 hindsight and all that.

 

Dad-blasted kids these days! i remember when I was a kid, the KBS would jes be sittin there on the shelf and you could have allllll ya wanted fer a DOLLAR. 'course we had to walk 5 miles through the snow ta get to the craft beer store. Yeah, THOSE were the days.....

One of my favorite jokes is whats the difference between a developer and an environmentalist? A: A developer wants to build a house in the woods. An environmentalist already has one. Those that got what they wanted a couple years ago want it to stay the same but the popularity is growing and you cant stop it.

There are many ways you can manage the release events. It will always make someone unhappy.. Maybe having different rules for different events is best because different people will benefit.

The real solution though, as imperfect as it is, I think will be on the supply side.
1) for the most part the brewers are brewing more of their limited releases each year
2) There are lots of small new breweries that aren't as popular and getting their limited releases. I bet there wont be a huge line for Greenbush Delusion at the release this month and its awesome. Shoreline has their barrel age series that is really great and this last year you could get lost sailor almost all year. Tri-City Brewing has a fantastic JD barrelled stout and wee heavy...

I know I will be standing in line at DH next year though. And buying tickets for Founders release... And going to Kuhnhenns for solstace... Its their beer, their rules. Just let me know how the game is played and I'll give it a go.

 

Why is the beer community the only community that shits on someone for having valid complaints? Please remember that we are the customer just like with any other goods. If I go to a brewery and drop $707 on bottles, ie Dark Horse, I've got some expectations. These brewery's are not holier than thou.

When It comes to brewery events, I don't expect perfection. I just want to see improvement over time and some basic thought put into the event. This was my first 4elf so I don't have anything to compare it to for Dark Horse. People say it was better than last year so I take that as a plus. If they improve on it from this year that's all I really ask for. Nobody in their right mind can say waiting 5 hours to get through 185 people is acceptable. And please stop with the, "How could they know how many people would show up?" They are in the beer industry after all. How about some market research? What have the crowds been like at other events around the area? You don't need to be a genius to see the craft market has been exploding and every event seems to exceed capacity.

The biggest issue I had with the whole 4elf event wasn't even within Dark Horse's control. Its the people on BA saying, "Don't come before 11 there will be plenty" and, "I'm not getting there any earlier than 10:45am." Then after the party posting about how the got full allotments and had numbers under 100 (which I know required getting there around 7am). I have no intentions in ever dealing with people who are actively dishonest to other BAs.

Thanks Dark Horse for the enjoyable party! Hopefully you can continue to improve it for next year.

 

This is actually quite an old nag that has been ridden into the stable yet again. And just as with the last 20-30 threads about how each of us thinks these things should be done, it does absolutely no good except to allow everyone the floor to sound like they have an answer. I will say, this particular incarnation has some of the better-spoken opinions than I have read in any of the others. Yea civil discourse!

This of course is the problem. The idea that we all have a 'share' of whatever beer is produced is ludicrous. "I had to wait X hours to get my Dark Lord allotment" or something similar really speaks to the errant sense of entitlement that is out there. It is not yours until you somehow come across it and buy it, and the brewery did not set it aside as an allotment for you. Pet peeve.

I was under the impression that, although they increased their capacity for KBS, that it will not effect the availability until next year ('14). Maybe I had that wrong.

 

I will admit I am one of the folks trying to deter people from showing up too early and camping overnight. Based on last year and estimating the increase in crowd size, I didn't think we would have to be there too early. Our whole group staying at the Comfort Inn did not think we'd have to be there before 9-10am. We were periodically checking the line and got a report back saying we better get up there soon. There was no blatant dishonesty here. We stayed up til 2:30am cracking bottles thinking we would have plenty of time to sleep.... but that wasn't the case. We were all a bit surprised by how early people started showing up.

 

I'm not sure if anyone mentioned this yet but I really like the ticked approach (i.e. giving out tickets to buy a limited release beer 4 weeks before it comes out as opposed to midnight the night before for the people camping out). In fairness to everyone I realize that many people want the right to go and seems like this approach could be solved by giving out tickets BOTH online and at the brewery. After living in MA for a while I would be really disappointed to miss certain ticketed events and releases at places like Hill Farmstead and being able to grab a ticket online makes up for it. At the same time, it's not really fair to locals who are a work to only sell tickets online (if you live 3 miles from the brewery, buy beer every week but get shut out to people who are never there but log online at 12pm first and get all the tickets its not fair), so in the interest of distributing tickets equally to fans and local support, I thoroughly support the idea of some tickets sold both online and in the brewery.

 

Fair enough. I'll take you at your word.

 

The wine industry has already solved this problem, and you're starting to see it in the beer world. Futures.

There is little reason not to do futures if you make more than one or two desirable releases every year. You collect cash up front, you have a perfectly orderly distribution system, you lock-in consumers (and create rabid fans). Even your parties/events have an automatic guest list.

It's going to happen more and more.

 

SO MUCH THIS ^
...however, community is not a one way road. share what you are fortunate enough to stumble upon as well and don't horde it in a closet somewhere waiting for the "value" to go up and the taste to go down.

i wasn't there, so can't speak to the delays and all and i do not personally know the dark horse guys, but from what i have heard...they are just enjoying themselves and brewing beer. they signed up to have their beer sent to NY and it took well over a year for that to actually happen. a business that is motivated enough to conduct market research would be motivated enough to get their product out in less than a year. you can't expect these tiny breweries to run like the macro guys. as an aside, why would they invest in market research? they brewed some beer and put it for sale and if it doesn't sell out, they'll send it to their distribution channel.

Trusting the times that BA's post about when they will get to an event is a rookie mistake. We've seen this happen release after release as well as special bar events. that's almost as silly as expecting the turnout to be less than or the same as the previous year. if you want to get beer and someone tells you that everyone shows up at 11, then you should be there well in advance of 11. it's a roll of the dice on how early to arrive, but it is very naive to think, in this day in beer maddness that you can just stroll up to an event, buy your beer and go home.

if breweries really want to eliminate the drama, they should just put their beer for sale, then post on their website or twitter or whatever and say "come and get it" - breweries making specific special events is inviting people to plan and travel. the beer will get sold either way, unless it is awful, in which case having an event it the sure fire way to ensure that you sell your beer before word gets out that it stinks.

just my $0.02